Hector Berlioz

Animation and contemplation are the poles around which the music of Hector Berlioz revolves, and nowhere is this more demonstrable than in the French composer's wondrous Requiem, the "Grand Messe des Morts," a work Berlioz envisioned performed by orchestral and choral forces of 1,000 people. The Pasadena Symphony revival, Saturday night in the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, utilized merely 260 musicians, according to the management; that was enough.

Hector Berlioz was one of those ornery figures who wrote music that doesn't fit into neat little molds. Perhaps operating in that spirit, the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Berlioz Festival seems to be trying to break some predictable patterns of the typical festival experience. For a start, 2004 isn't even the Berlioz Year -- the bicentennial of his birth occurred in 2003 -- so these concerts proclaim that we need not be chained to the calendar in order to celebrate this fascinating composer.

Hector Berlioz was one of those ornery figures who wrote music that doesn't fit into neat little molds. Perhaps operating in that spirit, the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Berlioz Festival seems to be trying to break some predictable patterns of the typical festival experience. For a start, 2004 isn't even the Berlioz Year -- the bicentennial of his birth occurred in 2003 -- so these concerts proclaim that we need not be chained to the calendar in order to celebrate this fascinating composer.

Hector Berlioz is a composer better known by reputation than through his music, the tiniest handful of popular works excepted. In Britain, the native affection for musical pageantry in general and oversized choral works in particular has kept his brilliantly audacious music on the boards, with help from three of the most influential British conductors of the century, Sir Hamilton Harty, Sir Thomas Beecham, and since the latter's death in 1964, Sir Colin Davis.

Hector Berlioz, that most eccentric and innovative of Romantic composers and today only an occasional presence in American concert halls, has been an uninterrupted part of the concert programming in Britain for much of this century.

"Les Troyens" carries such a fearsome reputation for outsize extravagance, you might imagine it was the Opera That Ate Paris. It is just too big, too long, too expensive for practical performance, went the received wisdom. And not without reason. Hector Berlioz's epic runs the better part of five hours.

What's this? Christmas without a new, or newly reissued "Messiah"? In fact, the recording industry, in a rare fit of collective wisdom, would seem to have decided that enough is enough, that there are a sufficient number of "Messiahs" (Handel's, that is) to please every taste--for this year, at any rate.

March 19, 1990 | CLAUDIA PUIG, Arts and entertainment reports from The Times, national and international news services and the nation's press

Bastille Opera's Baptism by Fire: Saturday's debut, a six-hour performance of Hector Berlioz's "Les Troyens" at the Bastille Opera, Paris' new $400-million glass-and-steel, ocean-liner-shaped opera house, was declared a triumphant success by Le Journal du Dimanche, France's Sunday newspaper. "A triumph . . . not one glitch," the newspaper declared. President Francois Mitterrand directed that the new 2,700-seat house was made "modern and popular" so opera would be more accessible to the masses.

Animation and contemplation are the poles around which the music of Hector Berlioz revolves, and nowhere is this more demonstrable than in the French composer's wondrous Requiem, the "Grand Messe des Morts," a work Berlioz envisioned performed by orchestral and choral forces of 1,000 people. The Pasadena Symphony revival, Saturday night in the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, utilized merely 260 musicians, according to the management; that was enough.

Hector Berlioz, that most eccentric and innovative of Romantic composers and today only an occasional presence in American concert halls, has been an uninterrupted part of the concert programming in Britain for much of this century.

Hector Berlioz is a composer better known by reputation than through his music, the tiniest handful of popular works excepted. In Britain, the native affection for musical pageantry in general and oversized choral works in particular has kept his brilliantly audacious music on the boards, with help from three of the most influential British conductors of the century, Sir Hamilton Harty, Sir Thomas Beecham, and since the latter's death in 1964, Sir Colin Davis.

"Les Troyens" carries such a fearsome reputation for outsize extravagance, you might imagine it was the Opera That Ate Paris. It is just too big, too long, too expensive for practical performance, went the received wisdom. And not without reason. Hector Berlioz's epic runs the better part of five hours.

What's this? Christmas without a new, or newly reissued "Messiah"? In fact, the recording industry, in a rare fit of collective wisdom, would seem to have decided that enough is enough, that there are a sufficient number of "Messiahs" (Handel's, that is) to please every taste--for this year, at any rate.

This summer's Festival of Two Worlds at Spoleto will feature productions of classical and modern music, ranging from Mozart's opera "Le Nozze di Figaro" to "Hydrogen Jukebox" by Philip Glass, organizers said today. The international menu of culture will take place from June 27 to July 15 in the medieval town about 65 miles north of Rome.